


Icarus Is Flying Too Close to the Sun

by rfeyra



Category: Torment: Tides of Numenera (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Development, Concerned Aligern, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Nobody is Dead, One-Sided Attraction, Retelling, Some Plot, The Most Awkward Ginormous Titanic Colossal Crush At First Sight Which Is Secret Only For Erritis, Unresolved Emotional Tension, What Are One's Feelings Worth, What Is One Life Worth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:25:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfeyra/pseuds/rfeyra
Summary: The Last Castoff falls hard the moment he feels the golden aura and sees the man underneath. The rest of the journey he is maturing as a person, trying to save Erritis from his demons and figuring out what his own feelings are worth.





	Icarus Is Flying Too Close to the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from the song 'Icarus' by Bastille <3
> 
> The fic is partially a retelling of Erritis’ companion quest and contains a large number of quotes from the game itself. I do not own any of these as well as the characters, etc. I sincerely thank Chris Avellone for the most beautifully written story and the most kind, heroic and dramatic character that I’ve ever taken pleasure in writing about. 
> 
> In addition, I would like to praise people responsible for writing the final conversation with the Sorrow. Also god bless Patrick Rothfuss for various reasons. 
> 
> I may have taken liberties in interpreting some of the lore freely (firstly because it is not explained in the game and secondly because I tried to make the scenes look more genuine). 
> 
> English is not my native language, so I will be extremely grateful for pointing out any kinds of mistakes. I might or might not be overusing commas for the same reason :)

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

“Kid, you’ve got no self-respect,” Aligern says once, looking at him with a mixture of pity and, for some reason, fatigue.

The castoff - the latest one - glances back at him in confusion. It did not sound reproachfully, but the look in Aligern’s eyes suggests malcontent.

“I never needed it,” the castoff says in the end.

Aligern pats his shoulder lightly, the living tattoos whirling unceasingly just above yet somehow still on his skin. He does not explain further and does not go back to the topic.

They hasten the pace a bit to catch up with the rest of the group. There are five of them now, although it is hard to determine whether to count Oom’s invisible, but undoubtedly distinct presence nearby, in the depths of the Labyrinth.

The castoff knows he is staring, but does not avert his eyes. He watches the golden aura widen and swallow him whole when he gets close enough, its delicate tendrils twining themselves round his body almost imperceptibly. The feeling is delightful. And glorious.

And tantalizing.

The Labyrinth’s vast mindscape is almost infinite. Or actually infinite. It is not dark in there, and the castoff is not scared of the dark either way, but it is cold and void. He views himself and he feels hollow, like a shell with no core, and even Erritis’ warm radiance cannot illuminate him from the inside.

He watches the man talk with Matkina, every curve of her mouth noticeable as it flinches repeatedly. She tries to leave some extra space between her and Erritis for Rhin, but she is not looking too annoyed. The castoff does not feel anything for his sister, not yet, and he is unsure of what his findings may reveal.

Erritis looks at her with radiant eyes and emanates steady dazzling glow that seems to become even shinier with every word he says.

The empirical evidence that the castoff has gathered by now suggests that the glow should make him feel better, stronger, invigorated.

For some reason, it doesn’t.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

Rhin is the first one to ask about his name. She is sitting at the table, too high for her and a bit greasy, looking around the tavern curiously. The place is as peculiar as the rest of the Sagus Cliffs, and just as perilous.

The castoff is sitting across the table from her in silence, still head-deep in the thoughts of his own.

Matkina told them to stay at the table while she checked the menu, but he wandered off anyway. He could feel the psychics’ presence all around the room, but the one he was drawn towards by a sense other than pure vision differed somehow.

Whatever it was that their communication lead to, it proved to be too enlightening to be comprehended right away. It was not scary, but it was… a lot. The castoff could not breathe for a while, his mind racing at a mortally dangerous, inhumanly fast pace, trying to keep up with a much more advanced intelligence.

He returned to the table overawed and shaken and said nothing even after his nosebleed ran dry.

“They keep calling you a castoff,” Rhin says later, pulling him out of his pondering. “Like Matkina.”

“Yes,” he nods in response.

“May I ask what your name is then?” Rhin inquires politely as always.

The castoff gives her a sheepish smile. He has not feared the question, he just used to hope it won’t ever be asked.

“I don’t have one,” he replies honestly. He is not ashamed of admitting the truth. “I never needed it.”

“You… don’t?” Rhin seems confused for a moment. She looks around the table and reaches to tug gently at Erritis’ doublet on the elbow. “Erritis, may I ask you something? What is our friend’s name?”

Erritis turns to them and smiles the same way he does everything - openly and without the slightest reflection.

“I have no idea,” he says enthusiastically. “But I like him.”

He means it. It is the most dumbfounding, actually - there is nothing to like about the castoff. There is nothing about the castoff at all.

He feels his face relax and a silly grin alter his features. His nose must be bleeding again, but he doesn’t care.

“It won’t do. Everyone needs a name!” Rhin disagrees.

The statement is questionable at best. But the castoff knows that the girl means well. He does not want to disappoint her more than he needs to.

“I don’t!” Erritis laughs blissfully to his left and gasps suddenly. “Or do I?”

The castoff glances at him, but the blue eyes are fixed elsewhere. He wonders what his own eyes look like and then - what kind of name he could possibly have.

The Changing God, the man that he owes everything to, used an alias “Adahn” when he was inhabiting this body. It does not sound appropriate. Unsurprisingly, nothing does. Or rather, Nothing does.

“I’d like to be called Nihil,” he addresses the others when Aligern and Matkina approach with a bunch of half-full cups of whatever liquid.

“Okay,” Erritis brightens. “Sounds significant. What was it again?”

He looks the castoff straight in the eye, and honestly, he could call him anything, he could call him nothing, he could not call him at all - the castoff would still be right behind him, bathing in the rays of an easy-going, fairly searing sun.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

When Salimeri grants him the Ring of Entanglement - two identical metal bands smelted from looping threads merging seamlessly into a single pattern - he studies them carefully. It is very important to figure out what it is exactly that the rings share between the wearers.

He knows enough by now to be cautious. Erritis would never notice the difference at sight, but if he could otherwise feel it?.. The castoff - Nihil, he keeps calling himself, but he still struggles to actually perceive himself as such - works with the evidence he gathered both from his sire’s memories in the Labyrinth and from subjecting the rings to various tests. Adahn’s memory speaks volumes of his former, no-longer-existent feelings for Salimeri herself but it says almost nothing of the practical use of the paired bands than are now in Nihil’s possession.

The need proves to be stronger than the misgivings. The castoff tries to get the timing right, but in the end it does not matter. He provides arguments regarding the possible benefits in case they one day cannot avoid fighting and the actual benefits of various kinds, but it does not matter either. Erritis simply likes the ring that the castoff (whose name he keeps forgetting all the time) puts on his open palm, and he wants to wear it.

When they put the bands on, it is not quite everything that Nihil was hoping for. He does feel more... alive, so to say. More willing to live. He gets a taste of the gentle warmth of the luminary he was orbiting, but even in the midst of the golden glow the cold, hollow expanse of the Labyrinth is still with him.

He thinks that he must have been desensitised the moment his personality was born from a tiny spark. He also thinks it might have been a good thing.

He doesn’t have a weapon because he is inexperienced in wielding any. Unlike Erritis, Matkina listens to the points that her younger sibling is making with great interest. She doesn’t seem to understand why the castoff would actually need to wear a sharing band with anyone, but she looks convinced.

“How come you don’t use a weapon, little brother? Our kind is violent. An unarmed castoff is unlikely to live for long,” she tells him after a while, when the Ring of Entanglement is already forming a duplicate golden aura around his self.

“I never needed it. No matter how skilled naturally, it will take time for me to match any experienced fighter,” he says simply, but Matkina only gives a sharp laugh.

“Of course,” she says. “To ever stand a chance, you need to do something. No one achieved things by not trying.”

He touches the metal band on his index finger lightly and nods, although he is not going to get a weapon any time soon. His main weapons are his tongue and a silver thorn at its end, no matter how benign.

There is a storm ravaging him from the inside, a raging tempest, the Iron Wind on the loose, capable of destroying metropolises in a single go.

He sees Erritis’ unflurried face clear as day from the other side of the Disciples’ compound, and for once he feels a little bit more at ease.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

When it happens, it comes as something that could break him in shivers. He is not ready for this, a clueless almost newborn conscience in a pre-owned body, chained to an ancient mindscape with no chance of release. He regrets that his older sister is not with them anymore even though he knows that she cannot possibly be more experienced in such matters.

He feels a gale coming, but the only thing he can do is wait in the audience. Erritis is just as asunder, trying his best to sound cheerful and failing spectacularly. He has been acting strangely since they stepped into the Valley, glowing bright like a supernova, a human-shaped star, whose destruction is waiting to be marked by one final, tremendous explosion.

Nihil remembers the first time he decided to ask about the glow. He had already been wearing the ring long enough to have an overall idea of how the aura worked, but not how it was being created. He asked bluntly, while they were wandering around the Underbelly, waiting for Aligern to pack his stuff before they could go find some more answers to cram into a bottomless pit of questions.

“What glow?” Erritis blinked.

“Look at me. Do you see any glow around me, then?” The castoff asked to make sure. He had been looking at the world through a veil of much thinner golden light for quite some time now, and he was sure it was not invisible from the outside.

Erritis furrowed the brow, concentrating, and studied his face for a surprisingly long moment. When he finally looked away and said “No, I don’t see it. Are you glowing? That’s wonderful”, Nihil had forgotten completely about his own question.

But he continued to observe patiently. Even at the hundred and first glance Erritis is a strange person, undoubtedly attractive and rather uncomely at the same time. He is not very smart, some could even say he is not smart at all, but he is not conventionally charismatic enough not to repel people with his inconsiderate behavior.

He is a wonder to watch.

Aligern sees the castoff stare shamelessly, but he does not point it out anymore. Nihil does not care. He is trying to figure out a mystery, and the pleasure he finds in gazing at the golden tendrils and the man underneath is not important.

Erritis acts unevenly, contradicting himself in every sentence. The castoff feels like he could almost hear his thoughts from time to time, like he could hear the echo but not the words.

Erritis tries to speak to him twice during their day one in the Valley. The first time does not go well, he is anxious and scared, but he would not tell Nihil the reasons. Instead, he speaks of the Valley of Dead Heroes as if it already was his final resting place.

He seems even more pale than usual, but when the castoff tries to steady him on the edge he pulls his trembling hands away and looks aside.

The second time goes better. Or much worse, depending on the point of view. It is late, and they are sitting by the fire in the corner of the devastated area, next to a woman who called herself Thalana. She is the only one apart from them who is still awake, but she is sitting far enough not to overhear the conversation.

Erritis is almost never sleeping - or never sleeping - and Nihil does not feel like closing his eyes either until he knows what is going on. Erritis is fidgeting with a tiny stone ball he is constantly carrying in his pocket. The ball is an oddity, and a rather useless one. It has only activated once, when they were still in Sagus Cliffs, but the castoff did not have a chance to figure out what caused it. The four of them were playing a game Rhin showed them, but they had to cut it short when the ball started howling, louder with every second.

Now Erritis is looking at the ball as if it was a piece of his own tombstone.

“Are you alright?” Nihil asks, supposing that he will get no clear answer, but still going for it.

Erritis turns to him, with a motionless smile on his lips and no sign of such in his eyes. He stands up and moves close enough for Nihil to actually feel his physical presence in his own personal space. He swallows hard and forces himself not to move.

“This is the Antagonist,” Erritis says slowly and falls silent.

The castoff is looking at the ball and waiting patiently. He does not try to touch it again - the last time Erritis put the ball back in his pocket the moment Nihil reached for it. This time, Erritis hands it over. It feels cold.

“This is the Antagonist,” the man repeats. “And I am the Hero.”

“It is…” Nihil says, but trails off abruptly. The oddity has an alarmingly severe presence. He does not know what to make of Erritis’ words.

“Every inch of this Valley is packed with adventure,” Erritis says with the same unfaltering smile that looks alien to his features. “We should explore all of it. Even the alcoves.”

It feels wrong. The castoff squeezes the tiny stone in his fist and raises the other hand to cover Erritis’ lips from sight. Not touching, just placing a quivering obstacle on the way of his own gaze. The blue eyes above his unsteady palm look ailing and frightened.

“Which one?” He asks tentatively, feeling scared for them both.

“I wasn’t talking about any alcove,” Erritis says, his breath hot and uneven. “Just alcoves in general. In the Valley of Dead Heroes. I’m not frightened of them. I’m not.”

Of course you aren’t, the castoff thinks. He drops his hand and gives the Antagonist back to his owner even though it is the least of his desires.

“Everything is going to be alright,” he says quietly when the stone is safely hidden inside one of Erritis’ pockets.

The man turns to him and clutches at his hand with death grip. He says something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a plea for help. Nihil does not ask to repeat. He wants to offer his friend some comfort, but he does not know what comfort is. He wants to help him, but he needs help himself. He wants to do more, things that friends should not do, but he doesn’t.

Erritis’ glow is almost gone, faded under the might of fear and unintelligible emotions. He looks older and very, very tired, with his hair unkempt and not as shiny and his face a desperate, utterly confused mask of a person who cannot make sense of his life. He looks like he is going to cry, but he doesn’t.

“I remember someone sleeping here. In an alcove,” he says hoarsely, staring unblinkingly at their clasped hands. “And then I woke up and I never saw the alcove again. The end.”

“I am sorry, Eri,” the castoff says.

Suddenly, a bright light flashes in front of his eyes, almost blinding him for a moment. Violent golden glow is so thick he cannot see through two layers of it.

“Oh, I am as well! I knew that we would get along nicely,” Erritis exclaims cheerily next to him.

When the glow fades back to normal, there’s a wide smile on his youthful face once more and his hair looks shiny, and the sight makes the castoff’s heart ache. Even the dark circles underneath pale blue eyes look slightly less horrid.

Erritis looks down in confusion, and it hurts even more. Nihil unlinks their hands promptly and moves a little farther.

They do not speak like that again, and in two days they stumble upon the alcove.

Nihil recognizes it right away, there is no chance of a mistake. The place is a seam in existence, an ominous black hole in the canvas of the Ninth World, and it reeks of hunger. The castoff approaches it, but staggers back at the entrance. There are runes carved in the stone above his head, ones of the kind that is not supposed to be read. A bobbling torrent fills his mind with a memory of a feeling, an echo of catastrophic danger.

He ignores the warning and steps inside. He is unsure if what he is seeing is a memory as well or it is still happening after it has been happening for a long, long time.

His gaze is glued to a figure huddled up in the corner, but every step towards it is painful. He manages to come closer, but he is seeing the alcove as if from a great distance. He cannot discern the details, yet he feels them clearly. He sees a ledge in the wall and a wooden stick on it, or rather a crook. Behind it is a nothing, the tiny seam in existence that is making the whole alcove be the way it is. It looks like a small case, and it has been opened.

The sickening horror that it evokes sends a crawling sensation along his spine and makes his legs falter. He hears Rhin’s voice through the haze, the girl sounds so alarmed that it gives him strength to haul himself out of the nightmare.

From the looks on the others’ faces he knows that no one saw what he did. Aligern is scowling like always, but his hand is resting reassuringly on Rhin’s tense shoulders. Erritis is covering his face with both hands, a mere shadow of his usual shiny self.

“I don’t… I don’t like this place,” he whispers, touching his eyes with a pained sigh. “Are we leaving? I want to leave.”

Nihil casts a look at the alcove over his shoulder. There is no one and no thing inside. He can feel Erritis tugging at his sleeve.

“Please. I’m begging you. Let’s go,” he wheezes out.

But they cannot. If they leave, the glow will swallow them whole and they will never speak of it again. He cannot risk it, he needs to find out.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says insistently.

Erritis flinches. He tries to say something, but he could not utter a word. Nihil still feels his shaking hand on his sleeve, but he makes himself remain still. He cannot offer comfort, he has no comfort to offer. He needs to know.

“I remember this place,” Erritis manages finally, the glow around him fading just slightly. “There was... someone else. A boy. He was tired. Scared. Not at all like me.”

He pauses. Nihil feels his own mask crack, but he does not say a word.

“He came to this place… and when he fell asleep there… he never woke up. The sleep buried him. And he screamed. He…” The whisper becomes so quiet it is no longer intelligible. Erritis’ hand cramps, but he does not notice. “I can hear it. When all things are quiet.”

“Who was that boy?” Nihil asks, naively hoping that it could be the final blow to break the circle.

Erritis murmurs something and shakes his head. “Who was?.. Some… farm boy. A herder. He chose the wrong place to sleep and the wrong time to follow his curiosity. He’s frightened all the time now. Who… ”

Almost. The castoff studies the alcove closer, with Erritis still clutching at his sleeve.

“Please, let’s go,” the man says. “Let’s speak somewhere else.”

“Are you alright, Erritis?” Nihil asks carefully, trying not to break his friend instead of the circle. He looks the pale face over, along with a grin glued to it with a messy hand, looking so vastly out of place.

“Yes, very. But bored here, now that you ask. We should leave. We should leave now,” he says, averting his eyes. There’s a single watery drop streaking down around the trembling corner of his mouth, but it is uncertain whether it is sweat or tears.

Almost, Nihil thinks again and reaches into the alcove. His hand becomes numb the moment it goes through, as if he manages to reach somewhere… utterly different. He is both close and far away once more, his hand reaching the crook on the ledge from five steps away, yet grasping a hold of nothing but strangely thick air. He sees the world clearly - fear on Rhin’s face and concern on Aligern’s, both of them silent witnesses to something neither of them want to be a part of - but his feelings are all messed up.

There’s a bright flash of light, and a scream, and more of it, and an invisible force - or not so, given that everything around is white, white, white with red circles - pushes Nihil in the chest and throws him out of the alcove.

His senses are all scattered on the floor around him, fragmented and incoherent. He gathers them, or he thinks he does, in his unamenable, weak hands. There are memories, senses, emotions flowing beside him, familiar but not so, touching his very essence, his bare mind.

And then it’s all gone. He is sitting on the ground, holding several sharp rocks in his hurt fingers. The scratches have healed instantly, there are only several blood stains remaining. He drops the rocks and tries to reach inside of himself once more.

He feels a new presence in the Labyrinth. He cannot know for sure, but he has an idea of what it might be. Another empty reflection, an echo of a silenced, disfigured mind. He can hear its voice from inside the vast mindscape, calling out for him, but cannot discern the words.

He knows the voice. It’s different, faltering, quiet, but it’s still the same voice.

Nihil looks up at Erritis, standing still as a pillar next to the alcove, weary and pathetic without his aureole. He looks exactly like a couple of days ago, when they were speaking late at night in the camp, but even more tired.

“What just happened?” The castoff asks and stands up to approach him.

Erritis mumbles, looking into the alcove but clearly not seeing anything. “I went somewhere,” he whispers, puzzled and lost. “I stayed here in my amazing, heroic body, but I went somewhere else.”

His hand lifts from his side and presses a finger in between Nihil’s eyebrows. The touch feels scorching, although the castoff knows that it isn’t. Erritis does not seem aware of what his disobedient limbs are doing.

Nihil feels his own backbone bend a little and leans towards the index finger poking him in the forehead, even though he shouldn’t.

The glow returns and swallows both of them whole.The castoff takes a moment to gather his bearings while Erritis is talking his usual gibberish in a semi-confident manner of a person who got a fifteen-minutes gap in their memory. It cannot wait, of course. He needs to know, he needs to go into the Labyrinth. In other words, he needs to die real quickly.

“Are you two… alright?” Aligern voices his concern, and Rhin nods three times in a row, looking at them as if they just grew a couple of additional limbs. “What was all of this about? What’s up with this hole?”

“I don’t know for sure yet,” Nihil replies, bending the truth a little. “I need to check something first.”

“Are you saying you need to run some tests?” Aligern, for once, sounds distrustful.

“Not exactly,” the castoff muses.

Then, some time later, standing next to a pit filled with boiling liquid, Aligern says, horrified: “This is going to kill you, kid.” Nihil shrugs. He knows, this is the idea.

“This is going to kill you for real,” Aligern emphasizes.

Erritis, who has been unusually quiet for the time being, rouses himself. “If that happens, do not worry: we will spread your tale. Or not… will we? I don’t know.”

The castoff throws a quick glance at him and gets on his knees, peeking into the pit of something looking suspiciously like lava. Can lava really kill him? To death? In fact, it cannot be lava, naturally, it must be some kind of acid, glowing yellowish orange.

It doesn’t matter, of course. He needs to know. He needs to go into the Labyrinth, and none of the people he asked for a favor on the way agreed to murder him.

“Good luck,” Rhin says simply. Nihil lifts his head to offer her a smile.

“I never needed it,” he mutters, looking into the lava-acid.

Then he dives in headlong and chokes on his own sorrow until he dies.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

The Labyrinth is a vast, horrifying space that he shares with all of his brothers and sisters, as well as their sire. It is a cosmic void, filled with feelings and memories none of them wants to remember. There are doors that lead nowhere and doors that had better lead nowhere. There are thousands of reflections somewhere in its depths. There are a few on the surface as well, the ones that reached the mindscape through the Last Castoff’s mind.

Nihil used to think himself one of such reflections. He could not quite grasp what has changed, but something has.

When he awakens in the Labyrinth, the new presence inside of it that he could feel even from his physical body becomes stronger. He wonders if the reason for that is the Ring of Entanglement or his own unhealthy fixation.

He pets Oom on the way to the stairs, and the blob makes a funny sound. He cannot be late for anything in his own mind, but he hurries nonetheless.

Erritis’ reflection is not an empty one, but it is exhausted. It is distraught from the torment it has been put through and from the fear it entailed. It does not notice the Castoff until he speaks to it directly, and only when it speaks it feels almost like a shadow of a former person it used to be.

“What are you doing in my mind?” Nihil starts carefully.

The reflection - Erritis - does not lift his eyes from the floor and speaks in monotone, shuddering voice. “You found my herding stick,” he says.

He speaks of the demons. Nihil listens. He starts crying, but the Castoff does not have courage to do anything, afraid that it could scare the reflection away.

“How can I help you?” He asks instead, his own voice faltering.

“I need help,” Erritis says softly, oblivious to their conversation.

Nihil knows that he was right when he first felt it coming. It could break him in shivers, and it did. He does not know either of them, his Erritis-from-the-real-world, possessed by heroic demons with a shitty playscript and this Erritis-from-the-Labyrinth who is begging to save him from what he had brought on himself long before they met.

Neither of them knows him, as well.

He stretches out a hand, but does not dare to put it on Erritis’ shoulder. The reflection doesn’t notice his movement.

“I’m lost. I lived in a grey field with my yol. I named them and pet them and clipped their yellow wool,” he says, and his quiet grief twists a knife in Nihil’s chest.

The reflection cries silently, still and emotionless, and it is a horrifying sight.

“I think they’re all dead now. No one fed them but me,” he looks around, but his gaze does not linger on anything. The Castoff remains silent, almost scared of what he could say if he did not.

“This was a long time ago. Before the demons came out of the black box and filled me. Before I was CALLED TO ADVENTURE,” the louder words tear themselves out of Erritis’ throat and he shrinks involuntarily, pressing both palms to his ears.

“You aren’t in control, are you,” Nihil whispers, but the reflection hears him this time.

“No,” it shakes its head. “They shout and whisper through me. They force me to be brave. They make me risk everything.”

The Castoff swallows hard. He does not know how to help. He does not know a thing about demons, and these demons are not open to communication. They make both of Erritis’ halves suffer. They hold him captive in a dimension that Nihil has no dominion over. How could he possibly help?

He would risk a lot if he knew.

“These voices…” He trails off.

Erritis is looking at him now, his eyes red with dark circles around them. “These are the loud ones. The brave ones who make me be brave,” he says, shivering. “The other ones whisper. They watch. They are hungry.”

He does not say it, his lips unmoving, but the Castoff feels the words resound in his mind - a hundred of distant voices, hissing “They want me to die”.

He feels himself frown, but he does not get a chance to respond.

“NO, MY LIFE WILL BE BORING useless WITHOUT THEM- “ A thousand voices bawl, echoing in the Labyrinth, and Erritis recoils from them, covering his mouth.

His pupils turn a mixture of red and indigo for a second, like the flames raging on barren wasteland of a battlefield. The flames black out instantly, and he lets out an exhausted sigh. His eyes are back to normal - pale blue, ill-looking and teary.

Nihil tries not to think of them too much for his own good.

“Please, I want to go home. I want to find my yol and go home,” Erritis pleads.

How does one fight demons inhabiting a person’s mind? Is it even possible? It must be. Perhaps, some kind of a numenera… The Castoff knows that he can come up with a dozen possible solutions on a whim. It will be a matter of practical implementation of these concepts.

“Drive them out of me,” the reflection asks again, waiting for a reaction. “Please, I don’t want to be me anymore. I want to be him.”

Nihil nods, not trusting his voice on this matter. Erritis’ shoulders lose half the tension, as if he was anticipating another response. He exhales slowly and closes his eyes for a long moment.

It will not bring anything good, the Castoff tells himself, but he stays for some time, trying to talk to the man his friend should have been. He is right. It brings… something, but it’s no good.

They speak of the demons. It is a painful subject and Erritis does not seem to know anything useful that could help to fix him.

Then they speak of the yol.

Then they speak of his past.

Erritis regrets everything that had lead him to the point at which he opened the black box, and it made him a prisoner of his own body. He talks freely of his former life - herding yol, living in a small stone hut. Nihil tries his best to imagine the golden-wooled creatures, but instead he is watching a small, tentative smile brighten up the reflection’s features a little when he speaks of his herd.

Thankfully, Erritis does not notice. He deserves better. He does not need… this.

The Castoff listens some more, about songs and the yol and the dreams that Erritis used to have until they were all crushed by his ill-advised curiosity.

Nihil thinks that he would have opened that box as well. He is doing his best not to open his own black box at any cost. He is just as hungry and sleepless, but it is not important. When he is leaving, he lets his mind gears spin at their full potential, hoping to resurface one of the Changing God’s memories regarding the demons or to come up with an adequate solution himself.

“Wait,” Erritis trails down the stairs to the portal behind him, looking around their section of the Labyrinth. “I wanted… I… Thank you.”

“And what about your own good?” The Specter questions deprecatingly when the Castoff is standing at the portal, ready to step through it.

“I never needed it,” Nihil answers honestly.

He leaves, and when he dies again he cannot help himself but stay for a longer time against the Specter’s and his own better judgement.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

They find her by chance, and she tells them of the Audience.

It is hard to appreciate even the obvious irony. The woman, Skoura, is sightless, and her desire to change that is so strong that it fills the Bloom with its echoes. Nihil has never seen anyone crave something that much in his short, eventful life. He finds it admirable.

She clutches a metal jar in her twisted hands and she believes it to contain the Iron Wind. The Castoff does not trust her on that, of course. He does not need the jar, however. He is seeking help for his friend.

Erritis is glowing steadily, blissfully oblivious to almost everything that has been happening to his other self. The glow makes the Bloom’s ugly flesh walls look like a much more comfortable prison than it actually is. Even knowing the source and the price that is being paid for the accursed heroic aura, Nihil still lets himself relax in the embrace of radiant golden tendrils.

He sickens himself, a lying self-centered wretch that he is. Of course, he does not act on his feelings. Of course, he does everything to help Erritis, every part of him, feel better. But he does not forget to indulge in pleasures that only benefit his egoistic self.

He does not realize that his logic is flawed.

Erritis approaches him on the second day after their triumphant arrival to the Bloom through one of its sphincters. He looks thoughtful, and it’s a rare sight. Nihil takes in the view while he can. He notices, however, that the man also looks very, very sleep-deprived. It does not come as a surprise.

A surprise is that Erritis wants to talk about Miel Avest. It takes the Castoff almost five minutes to realize that he cannot fit the events in the sanctuary into the playscript. His glow pulses, brightening up until it hurts the eyes to look at him directly.

Erritis is worried about the deaths, but they don’t fit into his heroic story. Nihil wants to ask if he himself does, but holds the reins firmly. He wants to ask what role he plays, if he does, but manages to stop himself from questioning.

When Erritis acknowledges that they were talking about the castoffs, not his heroic story, Nihil barely hides an amazed smile. He does not know what that acknowledgement means, exactly. It could mean nothing.

Aligern asks him once how far he would go to know the truth. He does not like the answer - as far as I need - but he nods in response. The conversation makes the Castoff question himself. He used to think himself a mere observer, a hollow shell, useful only for hoarding knowledge. Knowledge is the only non-perishable resource, isn’t it?

But the journey made him change. Speaking to the other castoffs made him change. His mirror became distorted, and it seemed that there was a reflection being born in its blackened silvery depths.

He wants to see more, and he is going to do everything in his power to make it happen.

In the end, Nihil takes out an organ to make damned chirurgeons give up an eye for Skoura. He did not need it anyway, or so he tells himself. Erritis, silly golden boy Erritis, an outgoing, short-sighted hero full of bad character traits, the finest person in the Ninth world after Rhin (who comes from another world, anyway), deserves to feel better.

Even if the negotiations with his demons go badly, the slightest chance to ease his suffering is worth an organ. Or two.

Nihil comes to the Labyrinth, and his Erritis-from-the-reflection asks why he is so scared. He did not even know he was scared, but he is. He is worried sick, his palms are hot and sweaty, and counting the possible ways how the conversation can go wrong is driving him insane. What if he does not manage? What if he makes things worse?

He asks it out loud. Erritis treats him to a rare kind smile.

“Don’t you see it, my friend? Nothing could be worse,” he says. “Death itself is a blessing.”

Nihil makes a hoarse sound and sits down on the stairs. At first he is sitting alone. Then Erritis joins him, as soon as he understands that the Castoff is not going to stand up any time soon.

He spends an hour agonizing over his feelings.

He does not say a word to the person they’re for.

When he’s ready, they stand up again in awkward silence. “Erritis, I want to talk to the Paragons and the Cathartics,” Nihil asks softly and watches everything go downhill.

The reflection is right - the demons do not realize, or do not care, or both, that he is a real person. They think him expendable and will gladly sacrifice their hero for the sake of the playscript. They do not want him dead, but they want him to die. Gloriously, of course, on an adventure of anyone’s lifetime.

They say that instead of bothering the Audience the Castoff should be watching the hero with the rest of them. He wonders if they actually know how much time he spends staring or it’s a very lucky guess. They ask why he bothers them.

He says that he cares for Erritis, and they do not demand a clarification.

They do not understand. They say that the man used to be nothing, that he inspires (whom?) through his suffering. Nihil winces at ‘suffering’ and says nothing. The demons believe that Erritis was insignificant and they made him wonderful.

The Castoff agrees and disagrees at the same time.

“To remove us is to tear him apart,” the Cathartics say, and it does not feel like they’re lying.

The demons make him a proposal - to make the hero more powerful and more short-lasting at the same time. They ask him if he would betray Erritis. He wouldn’t.

The negotiations are running long, the tension is rising. Nihil treads carefully on the slippery slope made of transdimensional scalpels. He wipes away the sweat from his forehead and tells the demons the truth.

They have no reason to wish for their stupid play to end.

And he wants its hero with him. As long as possible.

So it happens. The Castoff manages to come to an agreement with a bunch of demons living inside of his companion and make them loosen the ropes. He wonders what it will bring, he wonders if Erritis will change. (He doesn’t). (It’s even worse).

He couldn’t refrain from asking some questions, to know more and try to understand the Audience better. If what they are doing to people wasn’t so horrible, Nihil might have found them amusing.

He is worried that they wouldn’t want to leave after they are finished talking, but they prove him wrong. He asks them to bring Erritis back, and they do so without question. “YOU HAVE GROWN ATTACHED TO THE HERO” is still thundering in the Castoff’s mind when the unnatural scary light ebbs from Erritis’ eyes, revealing pale blue irises.

He smiles. The smile makes him look younger, although not as young as his glowing self. Nihil stretches his lips a little as well, but it doesn’t become an actual smile. He feels… bad. He should be happy that they achieved something. Instead, he is glad that he does not have to give his personal sun, both of them, up any time soon.

“I am glad that you aren’t gone,” he confesses. “I really shouldn’t be.”

Erritis cocks his head with an unreadable expression.

“And what if you did?” He asks. “Have you ever thought of what it is you want?”

“And what if I did?” Nihil answers wearily with the same question. He did, of course. He spends his waking hours pondering on this matter and he hates each and every last one of his findings. He does not tell Erritis that.

“I feel…” The reflection says. “He feels calmer out there. I’m not in control, but he is… Sorry, my friend. I am not making sense, but I feel better. Safer. Whatever you did, it helped. Thank you.”

There is a connection forming as he speaks, a certain kind of a mental thread, linking the reflection to Nihil’s mind. He felt the same connection with Seria, but he did not think it was possible for a person other than another castoff. The thread enwreathes his very core, gently binding the reflection to it.

They are silent for a moment.

Then Erritis speaks again, choosing his words carefully. “I doubt that I would be able to stay here for much longer,” he says.

Why don’t you simply rip my heart out, the Castoff thinks huffily. Erritis is not wrong. It was not obvious before, but the newly-forged bond makes it clear. He won’t be in the Labyrinth the next time Nihil comes here.

“I am also glad I am not gone yet,” Erritis says suddenly. It is ambiguous from the look in his eyes whether he means it or he says it out of pity. “But I won’t be truly gone as long as he is alive.”

He is standing so close that Nihil could easily embrace him without taking another step. He doesn’t dare.

But Erritis does.

He has to return to the Bloom - his search for the First Castoff is not over, and the Sorrow’s search for him and his kind is not going to end itself.

He simply doesn’t have time to reflect. He gets a hold of the Magmatic Annulet and does not part with it, using it to travel around the fleshy depths of the Bloom. By the time he visits the Memovira he starts to understand the fear of mouths Erritis told him of not long ago. It doesn’t sound that silly anymore.

The castoffs are fighting their own battle and plotting their own schemes for the resonance chamber, so dangerous and badly thought-through that it verges on suicidal. Nihil knows ‘suicidal’ well, he just doesn’t plan like that.

The older siblings do not consider him a threat. They may be right, and he was not expecting a mature attitude from the people who have spent centuries fighting each other in a war, but he is disappointed nonetheless. He accepts Memovira’s task to fetch a person from the Bloom’s heart for her. Aligern says he’s a madman. But what does it matter whether the man is in a heart or another part? The Bloom seems to be a fleshy blob with randomly placed sphincters, and the Castoff needs to fix himself a chamber as soon as possible.

He may be a little bit stressed, but he doesn’t care.

The first time he uses the transdimensional scalpel that he and Aligern constructed from a strange handle and a discarded power core is also the first time he wields a weapon. He uses it once - to cut open a Maw in a living being’s body, because he is not losing anything dear to him for an opened portal.

It is bad enough that he will have to part ways with Rhin, but the girl will do much better growing up with her family in the world she was born in. It would be madness to consider anything else.

They bid farewell as close friends. She makes a ‘God of Finding’ for him and names is Tehria - a small knife, short enough not to be considered dangerous. She says they may see each other again. The rest of them say goodbye.

They face the First - the Memovira - in her fortress. It is not as heroic as it sounds, although Erritis is very pleased with the sight of an epic final standoff against a vastly outnumbering force.

The First asks them what they want. It is a shame that so many castoffs are involved in the Endless Battle, and Nihil tells her so. She winces. She says he’s a child and could not possibly understand their cause. Her argument about the Changing God willing to merge all of his offsprings into his own mind is valid, but it does not mean that destroying the Labyrinth will bring anything but devastation to the world. The connection to the Tides may be too tight for them to live through the separation. Or for the world to go through it unharmed.

The First is not interested in maybe’s.

Nihil decides to play along (as if they could fight her army and live) and see how it goes. It goes south very soon, but before that the First addresses him once again.

“You will never get our sire’s approval by siding with me,” she says, genuinely surprised by his decision.

“I never needed it,” he replies, and he is not lying.

When the Sorrow comes, as terrifying and deadly as the last time, he feels nothing at first. Its presence is overwhelming, but what can it do? It could only kill them, and death itself is a blessing.

Then he feels with growing curiosity that he might have a minuscule chance to live.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

“Thanks, kid. It was you, you unlocked the answer. I couldn’t have done it without you,” Aligern says, grinning happily, and gives him a hug. He is relieved, saved from the looping nightmare in the Labyrinth’s fathom.

Nihil wants to ask what Aligern had been doing all these years before they met, why he hadn’t solved the frame’s puzzle himself. He thinks that he had nothing to do with the solution, but he is glad that his ever-gloomy friend is safe.

The Changing God is in the Labyrinth, working on taking over the Resonance before the First reaches it. The Sorrow is in the Labyrinth as well, possibly hunting down Nihil’s brothers and sisters, trapped in cages of their own illusions. The only reason he is not trapped as well is that he was created to master the depths of their shared mindscape.

He is not mistaken of what his cage would most probably look like. He knows that he needs to escape, but he does not recognize the way out.

He cannot be late for anything in his own mind, and he does not hurry. He is not going to face his destiny before he finds his friends and helps them break out of their delusions, and he obviously is not leaving them behind. He may be lying to himself, but he thinks that Rhin - an older, capable, blossomed version of her - is looking at him with pride.

“The girl is a head taller than you, kid,” Aligern barely suppresses a chuckle. They are wandering the Labyrinth’s newborn fathoms, looking for Erritis. Most of the dimensions are unknown to Nihil and they only contain other castoffs and memories of people they once spoke to. He does not free them - who knows if they would help or attack.

It will all be over soon anyway.

When they enter another fathom, he feels the familiar presence long before they make their way to it. It radiates warm, soothing feeling, echoing deep inside the Castoff’s core, linked to it by a thin, frail thread. It stretches through the junkyard’s expanse, past the discarded useless technology, giant heaps of metal carcasses and tiny pieces of shin that would have most probably made them so rich that they would never need to scavenge again. Too bad these shins aren’t real.

The junkyard is called Crefton, it is a spanless area just outside of Sagus Cliffs, encompassing the city beyond the Forebonds. Nihil doesn’t remember where he heard all this, but he does remember looking upon Crefton’s smoking wasteland from Caravanserai. From such height it was hard to discern any details.

Now the junkyard looks more like a metal sea in which they are suffering a shipwreck. While they are walking Nihil catches sight of several small animals - or maybe tiny constructs - scurrying about in the wreckage of past long gone.

Then the thread ends, and they see Erritis at the crossroads between the unstable metal barrows. His whole figure is tense, from clenched fists to tightly squeezed jaws. He is shaking and feverish, struggling desperately with a force much more powerful than him and not winning.

The golden aura is surrounding him as it always does in the real world, but it feels unusually wrathful and dangerous, its shiny golden tendrils whirling violently and threateningly bending their spines. Erritis is caught in the middle of the malicious golden cloud, pushing his demons away by a miracle or ill fate.

He looks up when the group approaches and shakes his head sharply. Nihil stops dead, staying out of the maddened golden aura. He can feel Erritis cede ground as if it was his own struggle.

“Tell me how I can help you,” he says, even though he knows that Erritis is no less at a loss than him.

It is the reflection he knows - the original personality of a kind-hearted man, fractured under the weight of uncalled for heroism. There is no time to waste on both pleasantries and laments. Nihil can almost hear the time ticking away in great distance.

“I don’t know,” Erritis utters. “I just know that I can’t hold… I can’t-...”

He lets out a painful moan and squeezes his eyes.

“LET US IN," the Paragons roar in anger so loudly that it would have been heard all around real-world Crefton. “WE HAD A BARGAIN, ERRITIS. YOU CAN’T GO BACK ON IT JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T AGREE TO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

The demons’ voices are deafening. The Cathartics whine in the background. Nihil hears Rhin gasp behind him and Aligern curse aloud. He clenches his teeth in anger.

Erritis looks rueful and forlorn and he flinches at the invidious words. As if hurting him was not enough, as if making him their puppet was not enough, as if it was not enough to be killing him slowly every breathing second.

The tangle of golden tendrils around Erritis blazes up brighter, but it cannot devour him. The Castoff holds out a hand and barely touches the glow with a fingertip. It stings his whole arm painfully, and he jerks it away.

“Leave him alone!” He spits out, circling the glow like an angered laurik-ca.

The demons’ voices merge into a cacophony of pleas, threats and screams with Paragons’ voices dominating over the Cathartics’ completely. They are scared, and angry, and scared. They cower at the command, and the hollow space inside the aura grows.

Erritis opens his eyes again, and fear in them morphs slowly into something else.

“LET US INTO HIM. LET US MAKE HIM STRONG weak. WITHOUT US, HE WILL BE USELESS TO YOU. HE WILL BE NORMAL fragile WEAK pathetic,” the Audience screeches, its tendrils writhing rapidly to no avail.

Nihil cackles hoarsely and doesn’t hold back a laugh. He never wanted to use the man. He met a wonderful person in the beginning of his short and sorrowful life, and at its end he is determined to do this person some good.

It is unfair, of course. Nothing is fair. He could make Erritis stay and suffer and eventually die, sooner or later. He knows that the man would not resist. The thought is ridiculous, however. Nothing is worth such sacrifice.

His own feelings seem laughable. He does not know what to think of them anymore. He does not even know what he wants and even if he did he has no right to ask. He needs to let go, or they will both die.

Nihil looks down from Erritis’ expectant face at the Audience between them. This glow, this golden aura is a curse. He never needed it, he realizes. And even if he did, Erritis did not need it for sure. It is a curse, and it should be removed.

The Castoff plunges both hands into the golden cloud on a whim. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and it looks disgusting, the nano-spirits attacking his bare flesh and scorching it, burning bloody writhen trails from the fingertips up his arms. He thinks that the Audience will rip off his skin, but it cannot harm him more than it has already.

He grabs a fistful of tendrils and tears them away from Erritis, dormant Tides in his inhuman body incinerating them like a ruthless wildfire, barely tingling the Castoff’s hands.

The Audience shrieks in pain or abhorrence or perhaps both, their programming overloading one after another. Flashes of golden stars in the aura create a chain of explosions, like tiny supernovas disintegrating right in front of his eyes. The screams of the nano-spirits drown in a cacophony of error messages, and suddenly everything falls silent.

Nihil is panting and he can hear Erritis breathing heavily right in front of him. They are both looking at the smoke rising from his unburnt but still hurting hands, slowly dispersing and disappearing. The Castoff does not want to look up, he thinks that he knows what he would see and he is scared of it.

He is wrong. Erritis is transparent, fading slowly just like the smoke. He is smiling, openly and gratefully, and crying. He does not seem to care.

Nihil stares at him, unblinking and rigid, taking in the sight before he lets it go. Memories are perishable, unreliable. As well as feelings. He thinks that he feels devastated, but what he feels is a lot. He should be happy, he thinks, for both of them. He is.

Erritis raises a hand and waves a farewell feebly. The Castoff does not have a chance to say anything and he does not know what to say either way.

He stares into the empty space where Erritis stood just a moment ago.

“That was him, wasn’t it?” Rhin asks from behind him. “The real Erritis, I mean. He was…” She breathes deeply. “Glorious.”

She wraps her long strong arms around Nihil’s shoulders and rests her chin on the crown of his head. She really is a head taller, he thinks. A single unintelligible noise comes out of his throat, and he chokes on it.

Aligern pats his back. “It’s time to go, kids,” he says. “You did good.”

They leave, and the Castoff feels something crack under his boot on the way out of the fathom. Must be his misery. He doesn’t look back. He probably did not need it. Who would?

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

Nihil is sick of letting people go already, and he knows that he will have to let go of everyone, probably as soon as he reaches the Resonance.

Is this what human life feels like? Castoff life must be even worse - living for centuries and burying everyone you grow attached to. Pitiful.

When he sees Maralel and the Specter in person again, he looks at both of them with antipathy. The two of them think themselves so important that they would routinely scorn everyone else. The Changing God in the memories and the Meres acts harshly and he has a right to, but he is no more a person than his castoffs are.

They are all people. Personalities. They live, breathe, they feel pain and they have a right to exist even if it makes the Sorrow hunt them. The Changing God seems to believe that he is the only undoubtedly real being connected to the Labyrinth.

In a fit of cold anger Nihil tells him what he saw in the Meres - that the Specter is a backup of the Changing God’s mind. That if he thinks that the castoffs are unimportant, then what he himself must be.

Miika does not recognize her father, and her father does not recognize her. The Castoff does not understand why it is so significant to have a ‘real’ original person with you. They are all broken in the Labyrinth, distorted reflections, shattered pieces of mirrored glass. They need to learn to accept each other.

It seems that he is the only person in the Ninth world willing to accept anything.

When the Specter disappears, Rhin says that she cannot stay. They are both sad. The girl - the young woman - feels sorry for him and his tough decisions. She has a better life now, but Nihil is disappointed that he did not have a chance to find out more about what she has been up to.

He never really had an urge to cry but he gets the point now. He has lost a lot, he is still losing a lot, he will probably lose much more, and these are not even meaningful sacrifices.

Aligern hugs Rhin at parting and pats Nihil’s shoulder in his usual manner when they are left alone with a bunch of castoffs waiting for closure. “It’s time to go,” he says. (And it is). (So they go).

The Castoff is wrong and not at the same time, in the end. He is the only person willing to accept anything, but he is not alone. The Sorrow speaks to him in the Resonance - the ancient defence mechanism meant to protect the Tides from being abused (or rather, used at all, for this matter). It speaks of suffering that Nihil’s kind has brought upon the world, and knowing some of his siblings, he believes it.

He does not believe himself to be responsible for their actions, however.

They speak for such a long time that the First and Aligern decide to sit down. Nihil asks the Sorrow of its past, of the castoff’s past, of the way the Tides work and of the Resonance. It answers. Finally, he asks what options he has.

He asks if he can live some more.

The Sorrow falls silent for a long moment. It says that neither the Changing God nor the other castoffs would ever resist using the Tides again. They would never forgo the immortality. It turns to Maralel and asks her if she could do that.

The First hesitates, but shakes her head. “I do not think so. I am much like our sire - I cannot and I do not want to contain my ambition. You are a fool if you think you can.”

Nihil simply shrugs in response.

The Sorrow turns back to him. “I have watched you all your life, castoff. This decision does not become you. Before I permit this, answer me one question. Why have you made this choice?” It asks.

“The other castoffs have lived long lives. I haven’t had a chance to live mine at all,” he replies honestly.

Maralel doesn’t like where the conversation is going. “And you will destroy us all to save yourself? How are you better than him?” She shrieks. In a single smooth motion she unsheaths two flamboyant blades.

Nihil does not remind her that it was her who led the Sorrow to Miel Avest in an attempt to kill him and everyone in the way. He does not move and he has nothing to arm himself with except for the transdimensional scalpel.

The only weapon he uses to this day is his tongue, but the thorn on its tip has gone blunt.

"Do you really think I'm going to stand by and let you make that decision? After all I have done for our kind?" Maralel snorts.

“Don’t you think that you’ve done enough?” Aligern confronts her suddenly. “All of you?”

The First looks like she wants to say something to him, but instead she glares at Nihil. “Let me remind you that I am the First. You are the last. I should think that gives me... precedence,” she says.

He shrugs again. “What would you do? Destroy the Labyrinth? We would die. Merge us into yourself? I don’t see how it would help our kind. Destroy the Sorrow? It is possible. But it would most likely destroy the world on the go along with all of us in it. What would you do, sister?”

“Are you that selfish?” She asks, quieter this time.

“We are all past mistakes of a brilliant man. I want to end this,” Nihil sighs. “Just not… right now. I don’t want to die just yet.”

The First crosses her arms. “How can you be sure that out of us all you, an infant, will never seek immortality and repeat the circle?” She questions.

“I never needed it,” he says.

He wonders if there has ever been a thing that he needed.

The Sorrow is quiet for one more terrible moment. "If this is your will, I do not choose to oppose you. Let it be done."

Maralel says nothing.

Then there is light, blinding, purifying, laying their essences bare to the core, stripping their minds of thoughts and fears. The walls of the Labyrinth collapse inward and from nothing the Castoff becomes a singularity.

The others’ minds are rushing into him like an intense torrent - a tsunami of experiences and memories, feelings and personalities that stretch across centuries and worlds, time and space. An infinite diversity, connected through the vastness of the Labyrinth.

With the last bit of awareness Nihil surrenders control and becomes a conductor of a millenial tempest of centuries-long experiences, letting these lives flow through him until he is reduced to a single dot on the canvas of the continuum.

 

-⍛⍱⍢⍡⍫⍦⍕-

 

When the light fades and the darkness remains, the kaleidoscope of senses starts slowing down until it reaches perfect stillness. The singularity becomes a single castoff, the Last Castoff, once more.

He awakens on the cold ground somewhere in the real world. (It is not difficult to tell it from the Labyrinth after you’ve been to the latter a couple of times). (Then he remembers that the Labyrinth is no more).

Somehow he still feels a variety of presences. There is a… multitude of his siblings at the back of his head (his mind), living (dormant) inside of his own self. There is Oom, enlacing his arm at this very moment. The blob may actually be there, but Nihil is not yet ready to open his eyes and check for sure.

There is that pale, thin, barely perceptible ghost of a golden thread that was never torn that was linking him to…

He starts hearing voices, muffled, as if from beneath the water. They are not talking to him.

“Come on, stand up. Are you alright?” Aligern asks somewhere in the distance. If he gets any reply, Nihil does not hear it.

He opens his eyes and sits up, momentary vertigo giving way to perplexity. The Sorrow is still there, hovering above the ground and waiting for them to finish the conversation. It does not seem scary anymore. The castoffs were afraid of it, but the multitude isn’t.

Oom is really clutching at his arm reassuringly. It is a relief to see the quaint creature in good shape.

“The Resonance is sealed, the Tides once again at rest. Your siblings are a part of you now. Your journey is concluded,” the Sorrow announces. “Unless you resume your sire’s experiments or temper with the Tidal energies in some other way, we shall not meet again.”

It waits for the Castoff to absorb the information.

“But should you do so, I will not hesitate to destroy you utterly. Our understanding is not a friendship,” it adds after a short pause.

Nihil nods, and in an instant the Sorrow is gone. It does not ask what he is going to do, and it is a good thing, because he does not have a faintest idea. He feels different. He feels better. Stronger. Invigorated. More alive, even.

He cannot quite grasp the feeling for a moment, but then the realization hits: if anything, he feels whole.

He feels so whole that turning around and seeing Erritis (not dead, very much alive) standing there (like he was not supposed to move on or something) does not shatter him. Well, maybe a little bit, and in any case it is more of a shaking sensation than a shattering one.

Erritis looks confused and out of place, his eyes swollen and dark from the lack of sleep and his posture a bit unsteady. He is looking around the Memovira’s fortress as if he cannot understand what has changed and where everyone has gone. Most importantly, Erritis is not glowing.

Nihil glances at Aligern and they share puzzled looks. Then the man shrugs and makes a gesture that was probably supposed to mean ‘Go ahead and ask’.

“Erritis, are you alright?” The Castoff starts tentatively.

Erritis blinks. “Yes... and you? This place looks deserted. Where is everyone?” He turns to the doors, then back to them. “We came through there, didn’t we?”

“Yes. The three of us,” Aligern affirms, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “You look different. Didn’t the kid save you or what? What’s wrong?”

Erritis frowns. Then he scowls even deeper, concentration written on his tired face in capital letters.

Then he sighs. “I don’t know. I really want to sleep.”

It is a miracle that he is still alive. Otherwise there would be a logical explanation for such outcome, wouldn’t there? With the Audience gone (it seems so) and the original personality dead (is it, though?) there wouldn’t be much left to inhabit the discarded body. Erritis is not the Changing God, he is not going to produce castoffs.

Nihil puts tremendous effort into restraining his excitement. It doesn’t go well. He feels like a volcano ready to erupt.

“What are you going to do now?” He tries again.

Erritis looks at him and rubs his eyes tiredly. “Do? Now? The now has never felt so much like an end until… well, now,” he says. “I am a hero, aren’t I? I suppose… I could find a new beginning? That’s what I’d like. Saving the world... for someone else...” He yawns.

The Castoff chuckles. “But first some sleep? I see. Aligern?”

The man is staring at his tattoos, touching his fingers gently to the living pattern. He looks up with a smile.

“First order of business is to get out of the Bloom. Maybe head back to Ormen. I need to let my people out,” he says. “After that… if you happen to be in the area, I’d be happy to introduce you to my wife and daughter. You too, Eri.”

Erritis nods and then nods again as if he forgot he did it already.

“I’ll be looking forward to meeting them,” Nihil lets out a smile. “Let’s get out of here before someone else tries to kill us...”

Even with the Sorrow gone, there are still plenty of horrible ways to die. Plenty of people and monsters and fatal mistakes that could get them (him) killed, for real (this time). This is a new experience, but not a bad one. Nihil understands why the Changing God seeked immortality, both in saving Miika and attaining a pass to eternal life, but he does not share this pursuit. He does not want to live forever, he is okay with dying one day.

He smiles. Just not yet.

They have to stay in the Bloom for the night, mostly because Erritis is dead on his feet - they don’t have shins left to spend on supplies anyway and the Castoff is pretty sure he can persuade the flesh leviathan to open a portal for them. A memory is all it takes.

Maybe this time the Bloom will take one of his own.

Qianne does not ask any questions and does not demand them to pay for a place to rest after they helped her out. It seems that the small rickety tent in the corner of Memovira’s Courtyard is all she owns. Nihil doesn’t judge: he has even less.

He sits down on the ground across a pile of cinders from the tattered rags covering the tent’s entrance and muses about nothing in particular. A lot of things happened, and now he is finally free to see what he makes of them. He remembers the day of his birth and the beginning of his journey and thinks of Callistege.

Then he thinks of Matkina. He feels bad, the guilt for choosing his own life over the thousands of his siblings’ is sour and thick in his chest. But they are still here, a multitude of essences steeped in slumber at the back of his head, and they do not feel angry. He wonders whether they understand.

He looks down and twists the bronzish band on his finger, its pleached pattern looping continuously into itself. Then he twists it again, and again.

Then he feels a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Wanna talk?” Aligern asks and sits down in the dirt next to him, Oom still at their side. Nihil glances at him and hums in response.

They fall silent for a moment. The Courtyard is rather quiet as well - distant voices, muffled Qianne’s snores, unsteady humming of some cranky engine. The Bloom itself is always… something. It is hard to describe a living creature so unlikely to be alive. Its enormous fleshy corpus houses hundreds of inhabitants and thousands of portals that could lead virtually everywhere in the Ninth world and beyond.

A transdimensional hub and an entity of a presumably surpassing intelligence, the Bloom intrigues Nihil a lot, probably almost as much as it intrigued the Changing God. But he does not want to stay, and not only because soon the Memovira’s thugs are going to start looking for her - and for the ones who spoke to her last. The Ninth World is majestic and he hasn’t even seen a tiniest part of it.

He is not going back to Sagus Cliffs, he realizes.

“I am going to see the world,” he tells Aligern, awe in his voice interfusing with elation.

Aligern smirks. “Do you have a map?”

In fact, Nihil doesn’t. “No, I…” He starts.

“Let me guess. You never needed it?” The man asks mockingly. It does not sound like he’s judging, and the smirk isn’t gone yet.

Nihil sighs. “I say that a lot, don’t I?”

Aligern swithers for a moment: “Well… yeah. But don’t it let get into your head, kid. I don’t mind.” It is unclear whether he feels uncomfortable or was just expecting an answer of some other kind.

The Castoff knows that he isn’t like the others. Not because he used to be almost immortal or possessed skills that no one else could dream of. Both the immortality and the skills are gone with the Labyrinth, but his inutile, mature yet callow self remained.

There is so much that he’s never needed and so much he’s never done. He is inexperienced in things that are quite common for all the inhabitants of the Ninth world, and if he wants to fit in he better start changing that soon. People have been helpful to him since day one, but he grew sick of needing their help.

He is twisting the ring again, equally oblivious to his actions and his distress. In the end, it falls from his finger onto the ground.

“What’s up with this thing?” Aligern asks when Nihil darts forward to hastily put the band back.

The Castoff hesitates, and the answer comes out late. “Its main purpose was sharing the nanites aura. With that aura gone, I should probably take it off.”

The ring does not work for any feelings, thankfully. It merely shares… effects, negative and positive, possibly physical wounds. A peculiar toy unless someone has a combat-ready nanites army stored in their body. And, of course, the activities the Changing God used it for with Salimeri could benefit grandly. Nihil feels the blood surge to his face instantly. It is irrelevant, anyway. He wouldn’t dare.

“If it troubles you so much, maybe you should try asking him,” Aligern suggests. It sounds encouraging and he is clearly giving a hint.

Nihil looks at him in alarm. “Don’t!”

“What? You aren’t the only one with a ringlet,” the man chuckles. “Look, Erritis isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he’s not a complete idiot.”

He’s not. And it’s probably only fair, no matter how unsettling. Being honest seems to be a formidable feat and takes a vast deal of courage. It’s not like the Castoff is going to promise much or ask a lot. He doesn’t even know what the options are.

He wants to see the world, and he is capable of doing so on his own, but he might know a… certain person… who wanted to see the world as well once, a very long time ago. And maybe, just maybe, he would like to come along.

And maybe it would play out to a better playscript.

“Thank you,” Nihil says in the end and squeezes Aligern’s shoulder lightly.

Oom makes a series of curious sounds - its body a shapeless nacreous mass stirring unceasingly between them - and reaches a slender tendril to touch Aligern’s shoulder as well. Its luminous eyes are shaping and folding as always within the pale translucent substance. Aligern looks down at the blob with puzzled expression.

“You’re welcome too, I guess,” he says.

The Castoff smiles and reaches to pat Oom gently. The creature is astonishingly loyal - even after everything the Changing God put it through, it still wants to serve his last - his only - castoff.

Nihil thinks that it must be hundreds of thousands years old - coming from another world, an utterly different universe, most likely, it is willing to share the infinite vastness of knowledge, all one needs to do is ask and have the means of understanding the response. The latter is lacking for now, and Nihil’s connection with the Tides was severed greatly, if not entirely, with the destruction of the Labyrinth. It would be too dangerous to start experimenting on the matter anew.

But there is nothing bad with theoretical knowledge, and he still wants to know. He wants to know so much. How to fit it all in one finite lifetime? He wonders if that is a trait he inherited from his sire. It’s unlikely, given that the other castoffs seemed perfectly... substantive.

He drifts off into the depths of his own thoughts instantly as always. They don’t go back to the topic, and soon Aligern settles down and goes to sleep.

Nihil thinks that something (everything) is going to change, but instead nothing (everything) changes.

When they are standing at the newly-opened portal, he turns to Erritis, who is looking much fresher than the day before. (The Castoff cannot say the same about himself, but that’s unimportant).

“I’m going to see what else is out there. The Steadfast and its nine kingdoms. The shores. The secrets. I cannot promise it to be an adventure worthy of your while, but... maybe... do you... Do you want to go with me?” He manages after a couple of shameful efforts.

Erritis lets out a relieved sigh. “I’m so glad you asked. Yes! Adventure it is. Where are we going? No, don’t tell me, I want to be surprised. Also I don’t like plans... but yours is a good one,” he smiles, and it sends Nihil’s heart straight to his throat.

He won’t be exploring alone, after all. He mumbles something and tries to hide his excitement deep within another, much smaller labyrinth inside of himself, but fails miserably. Aligern hugs them both at parting and goes his separate way.

It is sunny on the other side of the portal. The shimmering rays of light gild Erritis’ presence in all its brilliance with a much softer brush than the Audience used to.

Nihil admires the flawless palette of golden colours and genuine human imperfections and wonders silently, waiting for him to speak.

Erritis asks what his name is with a tinge of guilt in the eye and repeats it slowly for the first time.

The next day he asks again, and again.

One day he doesn’t forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me now  
> I'm here before you  
> I finally found the guts  
> To start with nothing to lose  
> Nothing to hide  
> And everything to prove
> 
> But it takes all you've got  
> All you're made of  
> And you learn that a soul has got to change
> 
> © Josef Salvat - The Days


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